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2007 Alaska Road Trip |
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After Steve left, I had time to walk Whittier from creek to ferry, almost end to end. The creek end is where the tunnel is located; that end of town is more upscale, with a nice, new inn, a cruise ship terminal, and covered walkways for walking from the cruise ship to an Alaska Railroad stop for trips to glaciers and what-not.
As you proceed towards the ferry, you can take a narrow boardwalk along the edge of the small-boat harbor, then to a cluster of harborfront and waterfront tourist-oriented businesses along Prince William Sound. Out of maybe 30 shops, I counted four with "For Sale" signs on them, and a couple of others that looked abandoned.
I reached the ferry terminal in time to watch the MV Chenega, my ferry, arrive.
The Chenega is a catamaran-style "fast ferry", with jets instead of props; it's capable of doing forty knots. It's so fast that you don't have much room to hang out outside; instead, you spend most of your time in airplane-style seats, and the only place they let you get an open air sea view is at the rear of the ship. It's not the best arrangement for sightseeing (or photography)...I had originally planned to take a regular ferry on a different route, one half as fast as the Chenega and more open, but the ferry on the run I originally wanted was in dry dock for repairs.
I boarded the Chenega. Less than an hour into the voyage, I drop my digital camera; the telescoping lens was extended, and it lands with a thud, with the lens taking the brunt of the impact. It bounces a foot up in the air before landing again. Witnesses gasp in sympathy as I bend down to pick it up and assess the damage. The camera says "lens error" and the lens won't move. It's easy to see why: the front most section of the lens is tilted at an angle from the rest. I panic for a bit, thinking I'd be camera-less for the rest of the trip. I decide to try to fix it, and, using a technique not unlike resetting a broken nose, I get the lens realigned. The camera still reports "lens error" but after a few more chiropractic-like manipulations I got the camera working again, to my relief.
The rest of the voyage was a smooth ride on calm waters under a bright and beautiful sun. We snake our way up an inlet to Valdez (Val-dees), the southern end of the Alaska Pipeline. After taking on more people and vehicles, we depart for Cordova. Here's a photo of some tanks in Valdez we saw as we departed:
During our Valdez-Cordova leg we saw orcas (or I should say, we zoomed past orcas doing forty knots), Dall's porpoises (small versions of orcas), and as we approached the port of Cordova, literally dozens of sea otters doing their characteristic backstrokes in the water. As we approached town, the guy I sat near and talked to off and on during the trip got invited to a late-night drink at the Reluctant Fisherman Inn with Trudy, a MOTAAAS (member of the appropriate age and sex). I on the other hand, was destined for a rendezvous with Dan, owner of the Alaska Fisherman's Camp, who would give me the key to my room in the new bunkhouse.
The fisherman's camp is a five-minute walk from the ferry. Dan is waiting outside within sight of the road, in a part of the camp used to repair boats I think. He walks me over to the new bunkhouse where I've got the whole first floor to myself. The room itself was fit for a monastery: a bed with clean sheets and two sets of towels, with no closet and not a stick of any other furniture in the room.
After a quick shower in the bathroom down the hall, I walk the ten minutes into town to grab a bite to eat.
One of my first sights of Cordova itself was this fence that a civic-minded citizen had decorated:
I'd been craving pizza—the trailer is well outfitted for many kinds of meals but a real pizza is not one of them. I had the house special and watched and listened to two teenagers on a date tell each other their life stories and dreams for the future.
I return to my spartan room, and decide that since I had the whole floor to myself, I was entitled to some rearranging of furniture, so I took an end table and throw pillows from the floor's common room and moved them into my room.
Here are a couple of the views of Prince William Sound I had earlier in the day:
It's hard to do a good orca photo with my snapshot-style camera but here's one that gives you a bit of a feel of what I saw:
Here's a view of the fisherman's camp in its entirety, with my bunkhouse on the right. That's fireweed in the foreground, a plant that we've seen a lot of in Alaska. When in bloom it has some delicate little pink flowers, and when it germinates, its seeds are dispersed by the wind, carried by what almost looks to me like down. The locals eat the spring shoots in salads and make jam from it was well.
Here's a close-up of fireweed in bloom:
Woke up Friday and headed into town in search of breakfast and a different place to stay that night. For breakfast it was Dawnovan's (sic), whose menu, from the ferry, promised homemade biscuits and gravy. Sat next to a large table of talkative people—it turned out to be a bunch of restaurant regulars, with two realtors doing a lot of the talking. I'm told Dawnovan's is out of biscuits so I have sourdough pancakes instead, though later I felt slighted when a regular did get biscuits and gravy as I was leaving. For the rest of my time there I eavesdrop on the table next door. One realtor talks about the six-million-dollar condos being built for use only as vacation homes, something all agree is such a waste. One of the realtors tells the story of a client who wanted to take his dog with him on his international travels but without the long quarantine when he returned home; the guy arranges for a special kennel section to be built on his private jet, and apparently by keeping his dog there no quarantine is required. The group is also baffled by the success of a thirty-year-old client of one of the realtors who has made a fortune developing websites for Viagra.
My next stop is a local bed+breakfast; the door's unlocked but the proprietor's out running errands, so I wait; I had the run of the house but thought I'd just hang out on the porch for a while.
Eventually Nevada (Ne-vay-da) the proprietor's daughter shows up, looking like she could have played Jan the middle daughter from "Brady Brunch": she tells me there's no room at the inn, so I check out one other place in town before deciding that the fisherman's camp is okay for another night.
After stopping by the Forest Service district office for some local trail maps, I head to the only trailhead within walking distance, located just outside of town on Ski Hill, on the 2560'-high Mount Eyak. It was drizzling off and on, and as I head toward the trailhead, one of the local wild dogs seems to be taking a dislike to me, following me up to the trailhead, barking, challenging me off and on throughout my hike.
In spite of the weather and the canine harassment I get some good views of Cordova's small boat harbor, the inlet, and the surrounding islands.
The clouds and fog are too thick to offer what I was really looking forward to, which was going to be a view of the Copper River delta, home to the best salmon I've ever had.
After one more confrontation with my canine nemesis, I descend the Ski Hill unscathed and head into town to look around. I stop, as I like to do, at a local book shop, among other places; by then it was dinner time and I was wet and tired enough to return to the bunkhouse for an early night in.
Here's a bucolic little scene at the base of the ski run:
Here's a couple of scenes of the "muskeg meadows" I was crossing during the early part of my hike up Mt Eyak:
My ferry's leaves at 8:30am; I walk over to the camp's coffee shop to try to hitch a ride to the terminal; the shopkeeper says the guy who just left was heading there, but he had dead bodies or drugs or something in his truck so he wasn't interested in giving me a ride. The shopkeeper apologized for his rudeness, saying he must not be from Cordova.
I end up getting her to call me a cab. I get to the terminal in the rain, with gusts of wind blowing us all around.
At the bookstore I went to yesterday the shop owner had a hand-drawn calendar that summarized Cordova weather during the past week: I guess I got lucky getting the one day of sunshine i got on the outgoing ferry ride:
I board the Chenega again, though this time seasickness bags are piled on every flat surface on the passenger deck.
This morning's voyage is non-stop to Whittier, so the return trip is completed in half the time of the outgoing one.
As we arrive in Whittier fifteen minutes late, I see a Touareg towing a Chalet trailer arrive just as we pull into the dock. I get in the car and Steve and I hurry to the one-lane tunnel.
